State of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[rrrrrr]

[I partly used/stole the template from this thread because the current template seemed unsettling to me. I don't know what 'impact' having written lore on Mormons would have.]

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small

Species: Human

Type: Faction/religious organization

Founding/Settlement Date (if applicable): 1830 AD in upstate New York as the "Church of Christ," current name began usage in 1838.

Region of Space: In lesser or greater numbers in many human-settled regions, but primarily found in Sol.

Short Description: A relatively large church.

How will this be reflected on-station?: It won't be, because the SCC is a secular organization that doesn't favor any particular religion outside of providing an all-purpose chapel.

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: There is a generalized lack of well-written lore relating to any presently extant religious organization. This is a taste of what I am capable of writing. I am willing to write similarly broad overviews of, I am not joking, every other religion. There's definitely a right way to do this sort of thing in a way that won't needlessly offend people. What I'm seeing on Aurora is a reversal of what I saw way back when on BS12, where the lore was there --- but very, very dumb. On Aurora, it just doesn't really exist.

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team? Yes.

Long Description:

I'll spare you the full history of Mormonism and just give you the basic run-down and some terminology.

LDS - Latter-day Saint.
Quorum - the highest governing body of the church below the President.

- In LDS historiography and theology, Mormonism isn't a new religion (and it definitely wouldn't be seen as new by the 25th century, just relatively young) but instead the restoration of the ancient Christian faith, essentially in opposition to older, more established churches. Owing to certain cultural values and influences extant at the time of the church's founding (i.e, Swedenborgianism, seers, proto-spiritism), private revelation has always been important. This has allowed Mormonism to reform itself and, throughout the years, modernize to some extent.

- In the early 19th century, a young treasure hunter, Joseph Smith Jr., was compelled to go to a particular hill in the region he lived in. Upon going to this location, an angel appeared to him and told him what most people know about Mormonism: start digging. Smith dug up golden plates and translated them via the Urim and Thummim, an ancient breastplate and pair of spectacles. Smith, who was mostly illiterate, transcribed what he allegedly read on the plates with the help of multiple people, such as his wife, Emma Smith, and his associates, Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery. One thing led to another and Smith was lynched by an angry mob, but by that point many people had been swayed by Smith's preaching and had become the first Mormons.

- By the mid-20th century, Mormonism had become an established part of the American religious landscape, with the vast majority of Mormons living west of the Rocky Mountains in Utah, Idaho, and in adjacent states. Politically, Mormon men were targeted for recruitment by the State Department and in intelligence bureaus, primarily owing to their abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, adherence to traditional morals, and skill with foreign languages. Mormons were generally stereotyped as creepily nice people with large families; some held the erroneous belief that polygamy was practiced by mainstream Mormons, something that was generally untrue by that point and would become more irrelevant as the membership of fundamentalist LDS churches practicing plural marriage became smaller.

High concept sci-fi stuff starts down here.

- Given Mormonism's history and increased involvement in certain sectors of the United States government by the early 21st century, it was generally considered unsurprising that the vast majority of LDS church members were broadly supportive of the establishment of the ASSN in 2140. The church's general sense of apocalypticism, which had existed since the late 1940s, was (at the time) undergoing a lull following the tensions between the US and USSR in the mid-late 21st century. The establishment of the ASSN reverses this. Within the next twenty years, during the surge in interstellar colonization, the church undergoes two schisms owing to the Quorum's general support of the ASSN and loses one-point-eight million members. In LDS historiography, the mid-22nd century is considered one of the worst times to be a Mormon, albeit for reasons opposite to the norm: many people in the church, generally speaking, at all levels, did not trust the establishment of a one-world government, especially one that involved the USSR.

- Colonization was an incredibly attractive prospect from the late 22nd century and onward. Earth's climate crisis and failing biosphere led to a great number of schismatic Mormons --- ones who, ironically, did not trust or like the ASSN --- participating in ASSN-sanctioned colonization efforts. The general idea was that the farther away you got, the better. The mainstream LDS church similarly supported colonization efforts, although the vast majority of members who left Earth did not go very far, generally staying within Sol.

- By the late 23rd century, there are roughly a forty-six million people who refer to themselves as either Latter-day Saints or Mormons living in human-settled space. Of that forty-six million, five million are members of the increasingly dispersed and numerous schismatic churches that split from the mainstream LDS church following the establishment of the ASSN and now live primarily in the outer rim and on the frontier.

- The Interstellar War breaks out. Schismatic churches in the outer rim and frontier support the establishment of the Coalition; the mainstream church has no stated opinion on it other than hoping for it to end as soon as possible. (It doesn't.) Given the distance, contact between the splinter sects and the mainstream church has been infrequent for a century, but their theology has remained remarkably similar: nothing too wacky has occurred. No one practices plural marriage on the frontier, outside of a handful of fringe churches with only a few thousand members in total. The main focus has remained leading a moral life and having a good relationship with God (and your local ward council.)

- First contact did not lead to a widespread loss of faith, despite what militant atheists were hoping for. Most religious organizations have had two centuries to account for the possibility of alien life and Mormonism was no exception; the earliest musing on what contact with extraterrestrials would mean for the church dated back to 1971. LDS theology was, if anything, particularly immune to this kind of paradigm shift, given that it always accounted for the existence of other worlds and, by proxy, other forms of sentient life. (There was, nevertheless, palpable disappointment in the mainstream LDS church that the Nralakk Federation would not allow missionaries.)

- Further contact with other forms of sentient life are met with excitement, given the general notion that the Unathi and Tajara are less advanced than humanity, not more advanced. Although distance and general restrictions make stereotypical missionary work unlikely (if not impossible), aliens living in Solarian space are given special attention. Extraterrestrials converting to any human religion is extremely rare --- it goes without saying that there aren't that many non-human Mormons.

- As of 2465, there are roughly seventy-two million people in human space who consider themselves Mormon, whether religiously or culturally. Of that seventy-two million, nine million are members of sects in the outer rim and on the frontier. Missionary work is limited exclusively to human-settled planets and interstellar bodies; many missionaries can be found in the Eridani Federation and the Republic of Biesel, although postings to a missionary's stellar object of origin are far more common.

- The church has no objections to non-human sentients becoming members; most Mormons in that category are IPCs owned privately by wealthy church members or the church itself. The number of extraterrestrial Mormons numbers somewhere in the low hundreds and form two distinct demographics, the first being non-human organic lifeforms living in Solarian space and the second being non-human organic lifeforms living in the Republic of Biesel. The mainstream church has no stated opinion on cyborgification but highly discourages members from voluntarily undergoing the process for medical reasons.

- Mormons in Solarian space live primarily in the inner sphere; they are stereotyped as being middle-to-upper class and working either in government (particularly the Department of the Interior) or in accounting. They are generally considered bland and lacking in good taste. Mormons in the outer rim and on the frontier more closely adhere to pre-space age stereotypes of being unnervingly pleasant and having large families.

- As of 2465, the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Michael-George Allred. There are as many schismatic sects in the outer rim and frontier as there are planets that have Mormons on them.

Edited September 11, 2023 by rrrrrr

[rrrrrr]

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Edited September 10, 2023 by rrrrrr
finished op

[GeneralCamo]

1 hour ago, rrrrrr said:

I genuinely have no idea what you're asking me. "No," but I don't see why that matters.

It matters because the lore isn't really going to exist for the sole purpose of existing.

As far as I know, there is not really any lore on current real life religions, with most of this expected to remain in headcanon. The lore app you linked on Catholicism was previously accepted, but it appears to have been wiped since then.

I'm really not sure adding lore on a religion that isn't even directly available in-game is a good idea. I'm curious what impact this will have for characters on the Horizon personally. 

Edited September 10, 2023 by GeneralCamo

[CourierBravo]

Is there more you can expand on this concept with?
While Catholicism in Aurora was seemingly canonized (ha) some 5 years ago, its presence today is fairly small. To the point that Catholics are only mentioned for 2 planets. The majority of the religious focus for lore is more towards either the post blue space religions or non human religions. I don't see any reason that you cant have your character be Mormon already. I'd like to point this as well:

1 hour ago, rrrrrr said:

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: 

I think space mormon is already a funny concept I'd like to see. But I think we already see aspects in mormonism already in other religions. Apocalypticism in a sense, or the coming of the final days, already exists in the Republic of the Qar's Great Slug, for example. If we're to add Mormons into Aurora's canon, id like for it to be beyond "it exists." And I'm excited to see what you do with the concept!

Edited September 10, 2023 by Bejewledpot
spelling/grammer

[rrrrrr]

Big post below. tl;dr is: I agree with both of you, basically, but I am mentally unwell and am passionate about speculative fiction that deals with religion. Read at your own risk.

I figured the date on the thread I linked made it all a little questionable, yeah. I (personally) don't see anything wrong with having the basics of something as large as the religions we're familiar with down, just in a sort of 'this is where X system of belief is at in the 25th century' sort of way. (If you can't tell, I'm a big fan of SF that bothers dealing with religion/religious questions: Dune, The Sparrow, A Canticle for Leibowitz, et cetera.)

Before I write what is undoubtedly going to be a long, impassioned spiel about where religion slots into SF, I want to note that I have a degree in Religious Studies. I'm very passionate about this sort of thing, so if I come off in a certain way, just know that I have good intentions.

I find the whole "religion is headcanon based" thing to be a little bit... odd? Headcanons tend to run into each other without about as much grace and panache as two passenger trains headed towards each other. I find it especially odd given that the vast majority of religions we have around today, in the 21st century, have been around for at least hundreds if not thousands of years. What, we figure out interstellar travel and suddenly every planet's got a different pope? Maybe when you get really far from Sol, and over a long period of time, that'd make sense... but we're not really dealing with that! There are magical (I can think of no other term to use, since Aurora isn't a hard SF setting) warp engines; we're not dealing with a thousand years between then and now, either, just four hundred and change.

I'll definitely try and expand on it, which might be a little slow coming. (Just got hired to teach at a school two weeks ago, school for-real starts tomorrow, so that's eating up a lot of my free time.) Two ideas I had kicking around was a past incident where missionaries went, illegally, to an alien planet (either Moghes or Adhomai) and ended up getting killed, which would obviously be some kind of situation. Another would be further hammering in that Mormons are basically born-and-bred bureaucrats and intelligence agents (the stuff about Mormons being targeted for recruitment in the State Department and CIA is true.) These are people who have a cultural aversion to a lot of human foibles... i.e, drinking, smoking, premarital/adulterous sex... they're diligent. They're patriotic. I can imagine Biesel/Coalition/frontier people emphatically not trusting or liking mainstream Mormons and viewing them as Solarian imperialists.

1 hour ago, GeneralCamo said:

It matters because the lore isn't really going to exist for the sole purpose of existing.

As far as I know, there is not really any lore on current real life religions, with most of this expected to remain in headcanon. The lore app you linked on Catholicism was previously accepted, but it appears to have been wiped since then.

I'm really not sure adding lore on a religion that isn't even directly available in-game is a good idea. I'm curious what impact this will have for characters on the Horizon personally. 

I think I mostly covered what you said above --- you make some good points, but I find the dearth of lore on actual religions a little odd and find the 'headcanon' thing to be a little off-putting. I'm not one-hundred percent sure on what you mean by 'not directly available in-game,' either, since the LDS movement is covered under 'Christianity.' (Yes, Mormons are Christian, specifically Christian in a way that makes perfect sense if you take into account the religious climate of the United States at the time Joseph Smith was preaching.)

[I push my glasses up and my face is immediately transfigured into that of the nerd emoji] Space Station 13 roleplaying servers have always had lukewarm at best religious lore and a major part of this is that, at least in the days of yore (like, 2012-2015), a lot of the people involved were atheists who had zero interest in writing about religion in an SF setting. I'm talking generally, here, this isn't about you, GeneralCamo, just something I've noticed after years and years (half of my life) on the periphery of this whole thing.

Anyways, lore basically exists as a framework for players to jump off of. All lore. The way I see it, the more there is and the more detailed it is, the better! Way back in the dark ages (2013), Tajaran lore was this: they are people who look like cats. They used to be owned by an alien race called The Slavemasters who are gone now. By the grace of God, Tajaran are now an actually compelling, well-written alien species! This was accomplished by actually writing something.

Anyways, I dunno what my point was, here. I like science-fiction. Aurora is (generally) a good science-fiction setting (if slightly fantastical) that's presently lacking in some things. As for the impact it'd have on characters on the Horizon --- well, I already baked in some mild conflict that's broadly reflective of the tensions between the ASSN/Coalition. It would also (hopefully) allow people, if they so choose, to play a Mormon character that isn't running entirely off of headcanon.

1 hour ago, Bejewledpot said:

I think space mormon is already a funny concept I'd like to see. But I think we already see aspects in mormonism already in other religions. Apocalypticism in a sense, or the coming of the final days, already exists in the Republic of the Qar's Great Slug, for example. If we're to add Mormons into Aurora's canon, id like for it to be beyond "it exists." And I'm excited to see what you do with the concept!

I agree that Space Mormon is an inherently funny concept.

Edited September 10, 2023 by rrrrrr

[ImmortalRedshirt]

In our world, individual religions alone have as many variants in opinion as there are believers, and these variants are impossible to summarize in an adequate way. Aurora lore also tends towards the approach of making vast generalizations for the sake of being concise. With these two facts in mind, any attempt to write about what IRL faiths would look like in the future would require putting more focus on a specific set of interpretations, or even just one in some cases. This would quite likely lead to not only some parts of the community being annoyed at the lack of representation for their own faiths, but also have to witness other players taking what is written and playing a character that they would view as both rooted in an incorrect view and incredibly stereotypical to boot.

Headcanons about a religion's place in 2465 may clash frequently, but hey, that's been happening for much of human history.

[La Villa Strangiato]

1 hour ago, rrrrrr said:

but I find the dearth of lore on actual religions a little odd and

Preemptively I don't mean this post to be rude or offensive, and I actually really like what you've written here. In my experience lore on real-life religions, ethno-religions, and ethnic integration that could begin to skew a little controversial are generally not added to the lore because the lore team doesn't want to spark too much controversy or hand this over to a playerbase that, let's be real, cannot handle them in some prominent cases. For example, I was politely asked not to mention a couple different MENA ethnicities in the context of demographics in a canonization app for Elyra because a few of them famously don't get along.

I think this application is badass, but similar to what ImmortalRedshirt said, if we only have extensive lore for Mormonism people are gonna get kind of upset.

[rrrrrr]

Thanks for the replies!

 

2 hours ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

In our world, individual religions alone have as many variants in opinion as there are believers, and these variants are impossible to summarize in an adequate way. Aurora lore also tends towards the approach of making vast generalizations for the sake of being concise. With these two facts in mind, any attempt to write about what IRL faiths would look like in the future would require putting more focus on a specific set of interpretations, or even just one in some cases. This would quite likely lead to not only some parts of the community being annoyed at the lack of representation for their own faiths, but also have to witness other players taking what is written and playing a character that they would view as both rooted in an incorrect view and incredibly stereotypical to boot.

Headcanons about a religion's place in 2465 may clash frequently, but hey, that's been happening for much of human history.

I'm not one-hundred percent sure on what you mean here, but I think (I think! based on what I think you're saying) you have a pretty good point... all that being said, I don't think it would be too difficult to get a little more detailed while also being respectful.

And for what it's worth, I haven't seen these vast generalizations. (But maybe I haven't been looking too hard.) Mentions of religion on the wiki are rare. Hinduism, the third-largest religion in the world, is mentioned exclusively on three pages relating to Xanu Prime. I guess Gadpathurians are all atheists. (Atheism, for what it's worth, is only mentioned on five pages: one relating to a region in Moghes, three relating to the DPRA and Tajaran culture, and one relating to... Xanu Prime.)

 

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Preemptively I don't mean this post to be rude or offensive, and I actually really like what you've written here. In my experience lore on real-life religions, ethno-religions, and ethnic integration that could begin to skew a little controversial are generally not added to the lore because the lore team doesn't want to spark too much controversy or hand this over to a playerbase that, let's be real, cannot handle them in some prominent cases. For example, I was politely asked not to mention a couple different MENA ethnicities in the context of demographics in a canonization app for Elyra because a few of them famously don't get along.

I think this application is badass, but similar to what ImmortalRedshirt said, if we only have extensive lore for Mormonism people are gonna get kind of upset.

I don't think you came off as rude at all! Thank you for your kind words. I agree that it's a pretty fraught topic and that, understandably, staff are a little hesitant because, you know... the playerbase is pretty varied. Kids of all ages, for better or worse, play Space Station Thirteen... and a lot of these kids aren't super nuanced writers.

I will say that ethnicity/ethnoreligions are a whole 'nother can of worms. I'd also hope that Aurora goes for the Star Trek thing where no one gives a shit about race in the future but I have never seen a concrete answer on that on any server.

[Sparky_hotdog]

I don't have a problem with the spirit of this app, but I'm not sure the format make sense to me.

I don't have a particularly strong opinion on writing lore for IRL religions, as I think that personal research + head canon works well enough for the most part, but also can see the merit of some unified lore. I have a larger objection to the scope of this app, however, as while you have expressed a willingness to give this treatment to other faiths, that is a lot of work. This clearly isn't going to be even just the 6-8 major world religions, given that you've started with Mormonism, a denomination of Christianity. My two concerns there are that a) It could take a long time for someone not on the lore team to write however many apps that would take, and get them all approved, and b) Embarking on such an endeavour, particularly with no tangible list of goals (i.e. which faiths to cover) seems liable to burnout, which could lead to any number of notable absences.

This probably doesn't mean much, but I would rather see a single app covering a wider range of religions in a more condensed format. I'm a big fan of the "paragraph planet" format, and I think the same concept being applied here would make more sense. I don't think we really need a timeline of what happened with every IRL faith; I would prefer a summary of planets with major followings and opinions on space-age developments.

tl;dr I think making an entire app for a single denomination of a single IRL faith is setting a precedent that is unlikely to be maintainable, and would advocate for covering many religions at once instead. As others have said, it would feel strange to only have one/a few IRL religion(s) detailed, leaving others untouched.

[The7thLain]

Hello and thank you for your submission. For the reasons listed above by many of the other community members we will be denying this application. The Human Lore Team's judgement concurs with many of the criticisms posited by the others in this thread, and we do not believe this would be a necessary or prudent addition to Aurorastation's human lore.